1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technical field of a measuring substrate for performing measurement in a substrate treatment apparatus that performs treatment on a treatment target substrate.
This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority of the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2012-152717, filed in Japan on Jul. 6, 2012, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a semiconductor manufacturing process, a substrate is sequentially carried into a plurality of treatment modules and subjected to a series of treatments. The treatment modules include, for example, a coating module that applies a treatment solution to the substrate by spin coating, a heating module that heat-treatments a coating film formed on the substrate and so on. In a more specific example, the treatment modules include a module that applies a resist solution, a module that heats the resist film, a module that heats the resist film after exposure, a module that supplies a developing solution to the resist film and so on. Similar modules are used in a treatment of forming an insulating film with a treatment solution on the substrate.
To treat a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter, referred to as a wafer) being a treatment target substrate in the treatment modules, factors affecting the treatments in the treatment modules need to be adjusted in advance. For example, down flow is formed to prevent mist spun off from the wafer during the spin coating from reattaching to the wafer in the coating module, and purge gas is supplied to a treatment atmosphere to prevent sublimate generated from the coating film from reattaching to the substrate in the heating module. Turbulence in state (wind direction, wind speed) of gas flow in the treatment modules changes the temperature within the wafer to cause a decrease in in-plane uniformity of the treatment, and difference in state of gas flow among the same kind of treatment modules causes variations in treatment among wafers.
For this reason, the states of gas flows in the treatment modules are investigated by computer simulation and adjustment work is performed based on the results, but it is required to further highly accurately grasp the states of the gas flows. Furthermore, it is important to grasp the states of gas flows not only in the treatment modules but also in a carry path for the substrate because they affect particle contamination to the substrate being carried.
In response to the requirement, development of a gas flow sensor is under discussion, and it is advantageous to configure the measuring substrate as cordless (wireless) in order to improve the operation efficiency. However, the wireless substrate increases in cost as compared with a wired-type substrate because a signal processing circuit including a power feeding circuit (power supply part), an analog circuit, and a control circuit, and a communication circuit or a memory as well as the sensor part need to be mounted on a wiring substrate.
On the other hand, prior to treatment performed on a product wafer, it is also required to grasp in advance a temperature distribution of a heating plate in the heating module and a delivery position when the product wafer is delivered to a mounting part in the treatment module, in addition to the states of gas flows. It is disclosed, in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-80489, that the wireless wafer including a temperature sensor is used to measure the temperature in the heating module and store it in a memory, and the wafer is returned to a dedicated carrier to read measurement data from the memory. It is also disclosed, in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2008-109027, that a wireless wafer including an acceleration sensor is delivered by a substrate carrier mechanism to a spin chuck in the coating module, and a positional displacement amount between a rotation center and a center of the wafer is grasped based on a measurement signal of the acceleration sensor when rotating the wafer. By using the measuring substrate as a wireless substrate as described above, the measurement operation can be performed with higher operation efficiency. However, the wireless substrate is expensive as has been described, and there are many kinds of measurement targets (measured factors), contributing to increase in total operation cost.